


Packing Up (The Road Ahead Remix)

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-29
Updated: 2011-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-18 19:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere on their first road trip, they have their first kiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Packing Up (The Road Ahead Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cero_ate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cero_ate/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Packing Up](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3130) by cero_ate. 



The damn map is back in Bones’ hands when Jim looks over from the wheel with an irrepressible grin. They’ve been driving in a straight line since Oklahoma, Jim thinks, so Bones’ concern for getting lost—as he’s expressed more than once on this trip—isn’t merited.

“Need me to pull over and let you puke on a cactus?” he offers cheerfully, looking back out the front window, whirring through the dry desert at a smooth fifteen over the speed limit—130 since a few years ago, while the two of them were still off-planet, moving faster than any car on Earth through the universe.

“I’m fine,” Bones grunts at him, refolding the map and setting it aside. Jim recognizes cabin fever—or the equivalent from seven hours in a car—and looks instinctively for the next place they can pull off and relax. It’s nothing but desert for miles, though; a feeling Jim is too familiar with after days with nothing but stars streaking past like meteors.

The last five years have been good ones. There’s the _Enterprise_ , held in orbit above them somewhere, refitted and ready for another five years, if Jim can convince Bones to do it. Sometime in the last couple of days, while traveling around Earth as if they’re fulfilling some primal call to touch the dust and water humans sprang from, he’s mostly sure he’s convinced him. Bones is almost in love with the stars and the adventure by now, though Jim expects he’ll never admit to it any more than he’ll admit to _liking_ Jim’s company, or _enjoying_ a long drive through the middle of nowhere.

“We’ll stop soon,” Jim promises finally, resigned that it’ll be a while before they can stop, anyway. Until then, it’s a straight shot forward, and if the promise of the reward end of the road isn’t enough, there’s always the journey itself to enjoy. It’s age, Jim thinks, that’s made him like this—introspective and nostalgic for the wilder years of his youth. He’s months shy of his thirtieth birthday, and Bones has already had his thirty-sixth, and it’s beginning to occur to Jim that they’re more than simply mortal—they’re going to run out of time one day. . They’ve been on the edge of breaking new ground in their friendship for a year now, but neither of them are in a rush, as if they’re both denying their own, inevitable end.

There’s a slight tic in the muscles of Bones’ left hand, like a movement aborted just before execution. Jim looks over and meets Bones’ eyes when he tears his expression away from the window.

Jim blinks, as if he’s looking through the glare of the sun, and says, “We’ll stop at a diner in the town we’re coming up on.”

“The one fifty miles up road?”

“Yeah,” he grins, and lets the car follow the road for a moment. There’s not really much time, the car can only pilot itself by its pre-installed maps for so long (yet another reason Bones’ paper and ink map is a little ridiculous—they have systems that can tell him the location of every pebble on the road beneath them, but the _map_ is what keeps him from crawling out the window with anxiety).

A breath passes between them, the one that Bones pushes out and Jim takes in for courage, reaching out for his hand before he leans over and Bones meets him halfway. That’s how it’s always been for them: a reach across the abyss too far to cross alone, but an easy reach for them together. Jim’s eyes flicker over his face, and fall on his eyes and their lips brush for an instant. It’s the most natural thing that might have happened for them, fumbling and awkward and no less sincere for it.

Bones’ lips nearly miss Jim’s, fumble past and onto his cheek, and then back to Jim’s lips, which are dry. He’s utterly unprepared for this kind of feeling; the flooding warmth in his chest that’s better than any promise of arriving in California, or the rush of the speed, or the thrill of space. The kiss lasts a mere second, no more than an electric brush—it’s all they’re brave enough for, though the flashing expression they share promises that there’s more yet to come when they finally stop again.

Jim is the one whose lips break into the first grin, though Bones is fighting it for long seconds before they follow after. The inevitable conversations will be had, the serious ones about careers and futures and what this means, and the ones about how serious they each are about this while they’re both the most unlikely pair to fall in love.

“Jim,” Bones begins, and he isn’t even holding the map in his hands like a safety blanket the way Jim almost expects him to be. Bones is nervous, he’s put off any kind of relationship for eight years since his divorce, and Jim hasn’t exactly got the best track record as far as his own relationships go. There’s never been any serious question that this is the way things ought to be for them in the end, though. No matter what, Jim knows he’s supposed to spend his life with Bones as his companion: his friend and his confidante and someone he loves entirely absent of the sort of complicated, messy feelings he always thought would accompany this kind of quiet devotion.

Jim smiles and looks over to him one more time, checks the map one more time, and then squeezes his arm. “We’ll worry about that stuff later, okay, Bones? Just drive with me for right now, okay?”

And, amazingly, the worried crease softens in Bones’ brow, and he exhales: long-suffering and just on this side of a smile that Jim returns. “It’s not that easy, you know, Jim.”

“I know,” he says, and turns back to the road, all the promise it holds for them for now, and for as long as Jim can keep him.


End file.
